With the current job market, your soft skills are of even greater importance than they were in the past. Think of it this way. Let’s say that you’re an employer looking to hire someone to fill one open position for a team of workers. And let’s also say that you have 10 candidates that have excellent technical abilities applying for this job. However, only one of these ten also has really good interpersonal skills. Which one would you hire? Does this make you want to consider taking soft skills training now?
Soft skills include your personal abilities such as how you interact and communicate with others. In other words, all of your people skills fall into this category. These are what employers look for from new hires to ensure success in the workplace. They no longer settle for that truly geeky guy who sits in the back office and works all day by himself never talking to anyone. Those days are long gone.
Either you develop your soft skills or you don’t get the job or you don’t get the promotion. The better positions these days goes to the person with the best ability to work well with other people along with the technical ability to complete the work.
So, did I hear you ask how can you improve these skills? I’m so glad you asked as there are several ways for you to enhance your skills available to you along with many seminars and other training courses that can be quite valuable to your success factor.
So, Why Should You Develop Soft Skills?
Look at it this way, your soft skills provide an avenue for you to show off your technical skills. This is because when you show how you can successfully interact with others, your technical skills will come to the forefront. Yes, it really is true, you may be an expert technically but how you interact with other people is crucial for you to climb the ladder of success.
Another reason why you need to develop these skills is for personal growth. Your technical expertise will be of very little value when no one wants to work with you on the next big project. Hence, you can grow personally when you implement your interpersonal and leadership qualities. You may want to keep this in mind, people will respect your approachability and acknowledge how well you can handle their egos and concerns if you can provide the leadership they are looking for or even just work well as a team player.
The next reason is to bring out the leadership qualities in you. Your technical knowledge is not enough when you lead a team or run a project. In fact, this aspect is only a small part of a bigger picture. This is where you leadership qualities will be truly needed. Handling the team’s manpower, motivating the group and communicating with the upper management takes much more than your technical expertise.
Now, How You Can Improve Them
The first step to seeking improvement is to identify your strongest soft skills. When you write your resume or go for an interviews, it’s necessary to emphasis your strengths in these areas. For employers, technical skills are important however, they value more how you interact with other people. They want to know if you are dependable and if you can deal with others in a positive way.
Next, do research about these skills. Then you have to determine which ones may be considered as your weaknesses. And if you have a hard time dealing with difficult people or aggression is a problem for you, find resources to address these issues. You might see this as an additional burden but remember that this is an investment in your future.
You may also consider reading books or watching videos. You can get information such as how to deal with change or how to handle difficult people from seminars as well. And the fastest way is to search the net for more ways to improve your soft skills.